1 posts from January 1990

Tuesday, January 23, 1990

When Skylab fell to Earth in the deserted Australian outback and not onto Timmy of Long Chevrolet, many people hereabouts swore and gnashed their teeth that fate could be so unkind.A widely shared fantasy - Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Pipsqueak pitchman silenced by flaming satellite! - was shattered.

It was the late 1970s. People in the rest of America were enduring the national malaise, but they had it easy. They did not also have to suffer the insistent bleating of Timmy Long, pre-adolescent TV spokesman for Long Chevrolet in Elmhurst and leading candidate for most irritating personality of the century.

Little Timmy, dressed as an old-time newspaper boy, appeared in scores of different Long Chevrolet commercials broadcast in the Chicago area yelling about deals, discounts, inventory overstocks, close-outs, whatever. Literally yelling."Chevettes! Chevettes! Chevettes!"

"The commercials sold cars," said James Long, Timmy's uncle and former owner of the dealership. "I loved them."

He was probably the only one.- - -Puberty and financial skulduggery finally succeeded where Skylab failed.

Timmy's voice changed. The Long family tried to keep using him in the commercials for his nostalgia value, but it just wasn't the same, James Long thought.

Then in late 1981, Long Chevrolet, then the second-largest car dealership in the country, suddenly went bankrupt in the wake of financial difficulties brought on by employee embezzlement and theft.

"The idea had seen its better days by then anyway," said Timmy Long, now 25, and a deep-voiced sales manager at his father's Cadillac dealership in St. Paul.

Still, hardly a day goes by at Long Subaru in West Chicago, the family business since 1985, that a customer doesn't come in and ask the salesmen, "Are you Timmy? Where is he? How's he doing? Is he married yet?"

- - -

Timmy was always the prototypical whippersnapper, according to his uncle. He asked impertinent questions of strangers, yelled out the windows of moving cars and cut all sorts of capers to get attention. But he was just another brat on the landscape until he was 10 and took a vacation with his uncle in Florida.

The elder Long had been trying for some time to think up a truly notorious TV ad campaign along the lines of the old attention-getting Philip Morris spots featuring the screeching bellhop. One morning, Timmy was clowning around the condo wearing his uncle's cap and blue jeans rolled to the knee when inspiration struck: "Extra! Extra! Read the story! Buy a new car now!"

The ads began rolling out in early 1975, as near as anyone in the Long family can recall, and Timmy was instantly despised beyond James Long's wildest expectations. Hate mail poured in, much of it from viewers who were fooled by Timmy's obnoxious voice into believing that the volume on his commercials was much louder than the volume of surrounding programs and other commercials.

But - for reasons buried deep in the human psyche - customers were moved to buy cars by the hair-shirt homunculus. Ledger books show that annual sales at Long Chevrolet more than doubled shortly after the Timmy ads started.

"I never got a big head about it or thought I was some kind of star," said Timmy - now Timothy - Long (yes, ladies, he's still single) in a recent interview. "I was living in St. Paul, and nobody up here knew about it except my family. Once in a while I'd be recognized on a flight into Chicago, and I was always embarrassed by the attention."

Timothy Long has never seen any of his commercials except one - the infamous revenge spot, filmed in 1978 in response to popular demand. "Extra! Extra!" he began, as usual. Then a stagehand pasted him in the face with a cream pie. The stunt caught Timmy unaware and was a huge hit with everyone except the man who wrote to complain that they should have used an ax.

Timmy remained safely in St. Paul, never did any other commercial work, became an ordinary teenager and now lives an unremarkable life. "I write some newspaper ads and radio scripts," he said, adding wryly, "I rarely wear the hat and knickers any more."

Long Subaru, owned by James Long's wife, Roberta, still advertises "Timmy's Specials" and features very short Timmy clips in its infrequent TV ads.

But here's the frightening epilogue: Long has located 17 videocassettes of finished and unedited Timmy takes - much of it generic enough to rework electronically into a perpetual ad campaign.

So Timmy will never have to grow up. Not even plummeting space debris can save us now.

About "Change of Subject."

"Change of Subject" by Chicago Tribune op-ed columnist Eric Zorn contains observations, reports, tips, referrals and tirades, though not necessarily in that order. Links will tend to expire, so seize the day. For an archive of Zorn's latest Tribune columns click here. An explanation of the title of this blog is here. If you have other questions, suggestions or comments, send e-mail to ericzorn at gmail.com.
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Contributing editor Jessica Reynolds is a 2012 graduate of Loyola University Chicago and is the coordinator of the Tribune's editorial board. She can be reached at jreynolds at tribune.com.